Tensions can exist between organizational deeds and narratives of purpose. Employees who perceive such inconsistencies may go public with the aim of fostering internal organizational change oriented towards aligning rhetoric and reality. In doing so, they engage in a distinct form of prosocial behavior not yet fully examined in existing literature: societal-oriented prosocial behavior (SOPB) This behavior may be initiated through multiple motivational pathways – identification-repair, moral conviction, hypocrisy-aversion, or strategic calculation – all sharing four defining attributes: (1) employees adopting an external, public stance on (2), a societal-relevant issue with the aim of (3), promoting internal organizational change aligning organizational actions that are consistent with prior statements of purpose, thereby (4) signaling both their allegiance to and dissent from organizational practice. This paper explores both the distinctiveness of these motivational pathways and the specific content of employee societal-oriented prosocial behaviors.
This study examines the antecedents of female board representation in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), a region with one of the lowest global rates of women in leadership but substantial cross-country variation. We introduce the concept of firm–stakeholder tension—the misalignment between a firm’s visible gender composition and the characteristics of key stakeholders—and develop hypotheses linking foreign ownership, industry female employment, legal equality, gender parity, and firm size to board diversity. Using a unique hand-collected dataset of 1197 publicly listed firms across 11 MENA countries, our findings show that pro-female foreign ownership, legal equality, and gender parity significantly increase female board presence, while larger firms reduce it; evidence for industry-level effects is weaker. These results advance stakeholder and institutional theories by demonstrating how visible misfits trigger adaptation pressures, but also how local societal norms can reverse expected relationships. Our dataset and context provide novel insights into gender diversity in institutionally challenging environments. Practically, the findings highlight the importance of aligning legal reforms with governance codes, enhancing transparency and enforcement, and embedding inclusive policies and leadership development within firms. Greater female representation can strengthen legitimacy with investors, regulators, and employees, while contributing to women’s empowerment, social justice, and inclusive economic growth across the region.
In contemporary capitalist markets, cooperatives face increasing isomorphic pressures that can narrow their original purpose and, in doing so, risk compromising cooperative identity. Despite extensive research on institutional pressures, little is known about how cooperative leaders themselves legitimize the relevance of the cooperative model under these conditions. We examine how the relevance of cooperatives— defined here as the legitimacy, necessity, and value of the cooperative form for members and society —is justified by managers in this environment. We conducted 41 in-depth interviews with CEOs and governing body chairpersons from Finnish cooperatives and analyzed them using qualitative content analysis. Our findings reveal two main legitimation perspectives: a dominant functional perspective centred on economic benefits and business continuity, and a less frequent ideological perspective emphasizing the provision of domestic services, reduction of inequality, correction of market failures, regional vitality, and participatory opportunities. Results highlight that when functional legitimation narrows cooperative relevance to the pursuit of economic benefits alone, the risk of identity erosion increases. The study contributes to the corporate purpose literature by demonstrating how isomorphic pressures shape cooperative managers’ interpretations of relevance, often privileging short-term economic imperatives over the cooperative movement’s broader societal mission.
This study investigates self-reported managerial perceived ability to take actions aimed at preventing employees´ sickness absence within an occupational setting, focusing on three specific preventive strategies: actions to adapt tasks and setting, social support actions, and actions to involve experts. Regression trees, combined with bootstrap aggregation to improve model stability, were applied in an exploratory framework to identify key factors associated with the perceived ability to take actions. Distal organizational factors, such as organizational support and climate, showed the strongest associations with managers' perceived ability to take actions to prevent sickness absence, followed by more proximal organizational factors in terms of managers’ psychosocial working conditions. In contrast, individual factors, and notably, the broader organizational context in terms of industrial sector and organizational size, were comparatively less strongly associated. By accounting for the complexity of managers' work situation, this study provides novel insights and important knowledge. Future studies are needed to test the organizational factors identified in the study as more appropriate organizational preconditions for managers to support and retain employees with mental health problems at work.
This study analyses how employees construct their identities in response to placelessness-related multi-level identity threats. Drawing on a case study of a French banking organization that introduced a multifaceted form of placelessness that eroded workplace authenticity and distinctiveness, the findings reveal that employees draw from evolving micro-processes of polymorphic, place-based identity work to change their threatened multi-level identities. These findings show that the employment of identity work, relying on the synergy between multiple layers of place, enables the protection of multi-level threatened identities, the suspension and relinquishment of threatened personal-level identities, and the restructuring of multi-level threatened identities. This polymorphic place-based identity work process both stabilised and evolved the workplace, highlighting the dynamic relationship between place and placelessness. These findings have important implications for mitigating placelessness-related threats and for understanding the multi-level self in new and positive ways.
In addition to technological transformations, the increasing and pervasive digitalization of society requires firms to embark on major organizational change. Retailers are particularly concerned about this issue, as their survival depends heavily on their ability to become omnichannel. Therefore, this research investigates how middle managers make sense of organizational change in the shift toward omnichannel. In a multiple case study of five retailers undergoing this shift, we analyze the storytelling modes emerging from both individual interviews with middle managers and strategic internal documentation to better understand how they make sense of the change. Of the four modes (i.e., epic, romantic, tragic, and tragi-romantic) identified, epic storytelling is particularly predominant in effecting this change. The findings also reveal that managers’ sensemaking is shaped by the use of the recent and distant past. Retailers need to reflect on their storytelling practices to grasp how their managers make sense of the change. An improved understanding of how managers – as primary storytellers – interpret the change is critical to ensure successful transformation across the whole organization.
Drawing on a post-structuralist, Foucauldian critical approach, this governmentality study shows that mainstream academic dynamic capabilities discourse is not neutral, but a mechanism of power/knowledge. Adding sovereign, disciplinary, and pastoral powers to Dean’s governmentality framework, the study reveals what dynamic capabilities discourse governs, how it governs, the subjectivities it shapes, and its underlying goals. It unveils how this discourse enacts distinct forms of power at both organisational and managerial levels, renders top managers visible while silencing employees, produces ‘successful firms’ and ‘dynamic managers’, and serves the interests of capitalist economies. This analysis deconstructs dynamic capabilities discourse through a governmental lens and creates space for scholars to pursue more pluralistic and reflexive approaches to dynamic capabilities.
Internships are an increasingly ubiquitous temporary work category, positioned between educational and market spheres. Based on emerging discussions around the precarity and ambiguity of internships, we focus on how interns use provisional identifications to navigate this ambiguity. An in-depth qualitative study was conducted in the context of professional internships in the French business school context, examining how interns navigate the tensions between educational and workplace roles, making sense of their own identities alternatively as students and as precarious workers. Based on how the interns understood their intern positions, as that of organizational members, career-building entrepreneurs, or students-in-training, they built specific conceptions of themselves at work that oriented their coping behaviours, as well as their possibilities for engaging in workplace critique. We discuss the implications of these results in terms of understanding the heterogeneous identities of interns and their ramifications for workplace critique
A scholarly literature emphasizes that the sovereign state is easily underestimated as a market maker and market regulator, but in a variety of industries, the state in fact plays a key role in establishing market rules and preserving competitive markets as part of industrial policies. The concept of state capacity, which denotes the political and administrative resources that the state can mobilize to implement policies enacted, expresses this view. This article reports a study of the implementation of a public housing strategy, intended to raise the housing welfare in originally five (and with currently four remaining) disadvantaged city districts in a Swedish metropolitan area. The study underlines the value of the state capacity concept in a management studies framework as state capacity ideally includes (1) the establishment of laws, regulations, and policies, (2) the formation of state or municipality-level agencies or public companies that supply the professional expertise and experience needed to act as part of and to monitor and regulate markets, and to implement the policies being enacted, and (3) the ability to detect and exploit policy relevant market opportunities. The empirical material indicates that state capacity needs to be not only built, but also to be used, not the least when actions that can be taken if needed are consistent with policy goals being enacted.
Professionalization is a paradox-laden phase in venture growth, as the responsiveness valued by new ventures often clashes with the consistency required for scaling. While paradox literature highlights how actors can alternate between opposing demands, it largely assumes individuals have full agency to respond and emphasizes intended outcomes. Less attention has been given to how organizational structures shape, constrain, or silence agency, and how paradoxical responses may generate unintended consequences. This study addresses this gap through a qualitative case study of RoboVenture, a technology venture professionalizing within a highly regulated industry. Drawing on 39 interviews, multi-week observations, a focus group, and archival materials, we show how paradoxical demands for responsiveness and consistency triggered destabilizing effects when framed as organizational pragmatic paradoxes. Particularly, leaders simultaneously imposed strict processes and called for rapid action, prompting employees to bypass formal structures to sustain responsiveness, with unintended consequences on organizational dynamics and user-centricity. We contribute to paradox literature by empirically showing that ‘both/and’ strategies are not always preferable, as structures can constrain agency and produce unintended outcomes, and by addressing a key gap on the interplay between agency and structure through a structuration lens.
Engaging in different kinds of inter-organizational networks seems to be a natural strategy for SMEs that frequently open their boundaries with the aim of overcoming their limits. Strategic networks, defined as intentionally formed and managed strategic relationships with heterogeneous actors with negotiated and agreed-upon roles, are one of the forms of collaboration SMEs can use to access strategic resources with the aim of improving their performance and competitiveness. Despite their potential, strategic networks have been associated with a high record of failure. This has spurred researchers to better understanding the processes inherent to their functioning and evolution. This study examines the dynamics behind the evolution of a regional strategic network in Italy that has proven to be resilient. Drawing from the literature on strategic network dynamics and its management, and building on both primary and secondary data, we offer new insights on the dynamics behind the evolution of strategic networks by scrutinizing factors leading to crises, and their resolutions, that can lead to its transformation and resilience over time. The study shows that resilience of strategic networks requires a focus on both business and social dimensions of relationships, and alternating centralized and shared decision-making. Furthermore, relational energy mechanisms seem to play a key role in creating informal bonds among strategic network’s members and partners favoring reactivation of dormant relationships and mitigating the risk of dissolution in case of crises.
Intergenerational justice is a core principle of sustainability, yet empirical metrics on the impact of business on future generations remain scarce. Moreover, evidence suggests that different ESG scores capture distinct dimensions of corporate responsibility, highlighting the need for more targeted assessments. This study examines the relationship between corporate engagement with children’s rights and financial performance using a dataset of 1672 firm-year observations, combining a novel children’s rights benchmark with Refinitiv’s financial and sustainability metrics. Results indicate a negative association between marketplace ratings, assessing firms’ child welfare considerations in marketing, and accounting-based profitability, even when controlling for ESG subscores. However, no similar relationship emerges in stock market performance. These findings highlight potential tensions between corporate responsibility and short-term financial outcomes, emphasizing the role of regulatory frameworks and stakeholder engagement in balancing financial and social objectives.
This paper explores the myth of entrepreneurship and its attachment to grand challenges, by studying the ideational dimension of South African entrepreneurship support organizations (ESOs) and their funders. More specifically, viewed as a form of high-stakes translations of traveling ideas, the study examines the domains of grand challenges that ESOs and their funders engage with, and the way they envision paths to address them in a context with structural injustices. Through a qualitative analysis of interviews with 29 representatives of 25 ESOs and their funders, all operating in South Africa, the study offers a nuanced account where grand challenges emanate from both world society and the local context. In turn, paths envisioned to address them aim for both stability and disruption. It is shown how entrepreneurship’s malleability allows respondents to accommodate a range of high-stakes translations. In addition, the study indicates that ESOs are more focused on the individual and organizational level, while funders aim more at the systemic level, testifying to the importance of looking at multi-sector partnerships. In sum, the study contributes to previous research on entrepreneurship and grand challenges by demonstrating the malleable nature of high-stakes translations by ESOs and their funders.
This paper explores the mechanisms that influence the establishment of collaborative business models in interorganizational collaborations. To bridge the fields of business models and interorganizational collaboration, we propose an integrative framework that positions collaborative business models as a property of interorganizational entities. We next conduct a real-time, longitudinal case study of a collaborative process to identify the key mechanisms that impact the interorganizational collaboration process. Our findings highlight three key points to consider when exploring or establishing collaborative business models: 1) the scope of the collaboration, ensuring alignment between potential value (co-)creation and value (co-)capture, while also taking into account the resource dependence among the collaborating organizations and within the broader ecosystem; 2) the required level of organization needed for coordination and cooperation, considering current proximities and the degree of material and cognitive change needed; and 3) the contextual environment within which the collaboration is to be implemented, taking into account assumed roles and prevailing norms, as well as the relational structure of the ecosystem, its current state, and future requirements.
This article explores individuals’ motivation to alter workplace behaviour and enact institutional change. Through an exploitative abductive study of the early phases of Vision Zero, a Swedish road safety policy shift, this article uncovers the motivational factors among individuals who, early in the process, enlist support and become involved in efforts to break with existing expectations, norms and regulations despite contextual embeddedness. Drawing on the value-belief-norm theory, the results reveal that activation of personal values and anchoring of personal beliefs are key functions in mobilising the enactment of institutional change. These findings offer insights into individual-level processes for catalysing institutional entrepreneurship and contribute to the literature on value-driven behaviour, providing valuable lessons for policymakers and scholars in institutional entrepreneurship.
In John Maynard Keynes's 1931 paper titled Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, he projects future generations will work a mere 15 h per week. Though Keynes' prediction has not yet come to fruition, his formulation of a 'freedom from pressing cares' as one of the most important consequences of a systematic reduction in working hours remains provocative. The standard full-time work week remains at 40 h over five days, but some organisations have adopted the four-day work week (4DWW) for improved work-life balance. As such, we empirically investigate how individuals manage such newly found leisure time. Through 36 interviews with employees at four Danish organisations, each of which treats Fridays as a day free from work, we develop three analytical categories of self-management processes: residual work, reproductive leisure and self-actualising leisure. These three categories enhance our understanding of the 4DWW in particular and of systematic work reduction initiatives more generally. The analysis shows how the 'freedom from pressing cares' allowed by the 4DWW is used to extend the work week, formalise gendered divisions of domestic labour and produce entrepreneurial subjects, thus expanding the current discourse on the 4DWW to address the broader societal and cultural implications of additional leisure time.
Organizations experience a performance paradox when recruiting experienced external new hires (EENHs), whose superior expertise cannot effectively generate the expected innovation. We draw on the conservation of resources theory to examine the associations among EENHs’ expected reciprocity, knowledge sharing, innovative behavior, and the moderating role of perceived overqualification. Analyses based on a time-lagged survey of 318 EENHs and 63 supervisors reveal an inverted U-shaped relationship between expected reciprocity and knowledge sharing, which is moderated by perceived overqualification. We contribute to knowledge transfer research by unraveling the non-linear expertise investment patterns among resource-rich employees and advance knowledge governance literature by demonstrating how perceived resource superiority requires tailored governance mechanisms. We offer managerial implications for organizations seeking to leverage external talent for innovation.
